Jim Nielsen celebrates the enduring value of a Big Box of Cables
A blog post about hoarding cables finds resonance with people who've discovered their old stash actually useful.
What to know
- A blog post celebrating cable hoarding resonated widely after describing how cables stored for 10+ years proved unexpectedly useful.
- Commenters debated whether to keep cables at all, with practical advice split between organization strategies (grouping, labeling, clear bags) and aggressive culling of duplicates.
- The conversation touched on broader themes of utility, nostalgia, and the tension between minimalism and preparedness in personal collections.
The dispute Whether the value of occasionally needing an old cable justifies storing large, unorganized collections versus the minimalist principle that most cables will never be used and take up space. · positions read across 113 posts and comments
Keep cables but organize them strictly by type, capability, and labeling to avoid duplication.
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“Grouping them is key to deduplicating.”
booty · Hacker News ↗
Keep cables because they regularly save time and money by avoiding unnecessary purchases.
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“I wish the old cables, gear, etc. I have squirreled-away stopped saving Customers' and friends' asses because I could feel good about getting rid of it.”
EvanAnderson · Hacker News ↗
Aggressively cull cable collections to manageable sizes and let go of duplicates.
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“I had four big plastic totes full of cables. I pared them down to just one recently. I'm 90% happy with the move. It's ok to let go sometimes.”
__MatrixMan__ · Hacker News ↗
Jim Nielsen Blog authorTyler Gaw Social media poster
The record 1 articles and posts · last 30 days
What people are saying 24 voices from 2 sites · best of 113 · verbatim
- Sep 11
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> They've been in the bottom for 10+ years. So, "when are you ever gonna use these?" was today. Don't ever let anyone take your Big Box of Cables away.The fact that you haven't used those cables in 10+ years doesn't mean that you haven't used the Big Box of Cables in 10+ years. "Declutter" advice doesn't work for needs like cables, auto…
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I have all "current" cabling needs in a sort of travel bag thing ... I think it is intended for digital cameras or something but its kinda an A5-sized zip-up "book" of a few pages of pockets and straps and velcro etc. So USB-C to USB-C cables, USB-C <-> USB-A adaptors, audio cables, audio splitters, USB->RJ45, etc etc etcThen whenever we are…
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I've been wanting to get little baggies and put each cable in a different baggie, then have them on a hanging rack thing imagine like at the store when you want to buy a cable, something like that, I suppose sometimes they're on a shelf or whatever but I'm imagine a almost pegboard like situation, then keep them organized by cable and it's like oh…
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Never surrender the cable stash. Keep that box, the exact second you throw it out is the day you’ll need a 2008 mini-USB cable. Lmao. https:// blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/hand s-off-my-cables/
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I don't group exactly, nor do I want to de-duplicate, but I've organised my boxes on the shelf and sorted and labelled them recently, in what seems the most logical way at the time; I have "networking", "USB", "power", "A/V", "PC" and some as of yet unlabelled ones with random stuff I can't place in the others.There is some unfortunate crossover…
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I have cabinets for cables (all tie-strapped), arranged in separate compartments:- USB cables with at least one USB-C end- All other USB cables- Network cables- Audio and video related (RCA, HDMI, SCART, phono, XLR, displayport, BNC, S/PDIF, etc)- Power cables- Power adapters- Batteries and battery chargers- Flash sticks, type adapters, diagnostic…
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i bought a few loads of nice quality plastic boxes, with plastic lids (its got small handles that "clasp" around the lid, so they're almost air tight)then i sorted my cables and printed out a normal piece of paper, with the text like "networking", or "PC cables" or whatever and placed that in the side of the boxesthen i can stack them in the…
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My cable box Protips:1: use a transparent boxes like an 11l IKEA Samla so you can easily see what you have.2: fold each cable in half or a few times more and apply the granny knot[1], this will prevent your cables becoming an entangles mess. There are superior(tm) ways to fold cables, but doing the granny knot for household cables seems the way to…
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On a side note: grouping cables based on the connector form factor is evil when you include USB-C.Which of the cables are for PD? How much power? Can they do USB? If yes, at which of the dozen speeds? Is it a Thunderbolt cable? Which TB version? Is it certifiable or just blatantly unstable when running 40Gbit/s? Or is it some proprietary alt mode…
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Thunderbolt 3 -> Thunderbolt 2 -> Firewire 800 -> Firewire 400 -> Ethernet USB 3 -> USB 2/1 --> micro/mini/whatever-USB VGA, DVI-D, DVI-I, HDMI, microHDMI, [m]DisplayPort all there. And after this post, I'll keep them even longer.Often people don't realize there is only "downwards-compatibility", meaning later technologies can "tunnel" an "older"…
- Sep 10
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over 30 years of cable collection. rare gems include apple SCSI DB25/CN50/HD50/HD68/HDI-30 cables, apple/NeXT ADB cables, apple localtalk dongles, atari SIO cables, centronics parallel cables, din-8 serial cables, hdi-45, apple adc video cables,DB13W3 video cable, dvi-d video cable, dms-59, firewire 400 and 800 cables, ipod 30-pin cable, ega db9…
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Yep. I went through my big box of cables, deduped a lot of things, got rid of a bunch of stuff I'd never need, etc.Of course, I DID need one of them just a month or two later! But it was still a good exercise.Now I have a whole drawer in a workbench devoted to cables sorted by type. What's surprising is how I NEVER have spare USB-C cables and…
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I decided years ago to limit myself to just one box of cables... So then I ended up having to keep finding a bigger and bigger box to switch them to.One thing that bothers me though (or an excuse my brain uses to justify it maybe) is that it feels so wasteful to dump so many cables that will probably end up in landfill when I know there's someone…
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I have surplus/military bare cables dating from the 1970s or so, extra shiny silver plated copper with PTFE jacket: a joy to solder, then more "normal" ones from the late 80s and 90s, then "old" modern ones, that is, power/audio/data cables usable with recent stuff. I'll never throw away any of them because unlike most crap they bundle with…
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That sounds hard. Is a USB-A-to-C cable in the A group or C group or neither? What about the inverse? What about cables that only do data but can't transmit enough power? What about cables that are slow but high power? What about thick cables like USB4 that barely bend or fit in the bag? What about male-to-female vs. male-to-male? What about…
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Long-time believer in big box of cables, and it has paid off so many times.My "box" evolved to be 18 of those Sterilite clear plastic shoeboxes. It's a good size, and fits on most shelves, or you can even stack them, and then you can actually find the cables when you need them (unlike when I used a single huge plastic tote).Every ~5 years, I would…
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I do this. All my FireWire 400-to-800, 400-to-400, 400-to-dinky little Sony 400, etc. cables were all in one box, the FireWire 800-to-Thunderbolt adapter was in the box with my Thunderbolt cables and adapters, and I still didn't find the FireWire 800-to-800 cable I needed to use Target Disk Mode on a friend's Mac a few months ago until a few weeks…
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In 2021 I cut the end off a USB cable to expose the power leads which I scotch taped to the power meter on my bike to charge it. I kept that cable. In 2024 I used it to add USB disconnects to the light strip I attached to the bottom of my son's crib, allowing me to keep the light strip intact when we lowered the base from the baby height to the…
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Yes grouping is the important part. The next important part is labeling.For example, I have a variety of USB C to USB C cables but they each have their own capabilities. Some support high transfer speeds, so I keep them around for connecting SSDs, while others are just USB 2 speeds so they are strictly for charging.Another case is I have a very…
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Clear Hefty Slider bags are perfect for this! I have my cable boxes (Hefty Hi-Rise) filled with these bags, USB -A to USB-C, USB -C to USB-C (then sub-bagged with 65w, 100w, 240w) and so on.Point is, use clear bags so you can see inside, and Hefty makes the slider version. I get the gallon and half gallon bags for this, and then the quart size as…
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> clear 2mil generic ziploc style baggies> transparent plastic box> Banker's BoxesDo not do this. All plastic baggies, storage tubs, and grocery bags, are going to build up with static electricity. While it may seem totally fine to drop inert cables into a plastic bag, eventually you'll come up against a USB stick, or an SSD or SDRAM, or…
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This bags or bins or whatever your preferred organization method is. Don't just have "cables" group them. This is how I discovered "yeah, I don't need all these DVI/VGA cables and I can do with only 10 extra HDMI cables".I'll second "grouping" with "capability sorting". Get a cable tester and sort your cables by Charge/USB speeds. Even with my…
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Key for me is to "group" cables. For example, I have a bag of USB-C cables, a bag of USB-A cables, etc.Grouping them is key to deduplicating.It's easy to look at a single legacy USB A-to-B "printer" cable in isolation and think "I might need this someday!" Because you really might need it someday. However, if you group them you might see that you…
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I wish the old cables, gear, etc. I have squirreled-away stopped saving Customers' and friends' asses because I could feel good about getting rid of it.We've been unspooling the stash of wood off-cuts, bits of copper pipe, and misc. broken or trash-picked parts from my late grandfather's workshop for the last few years. He always seemed to have…